Haunted Hotel at MGM at Universal Studios Florida- if you're unfamiliar, you're in a car and you're secured by a lap bar. The ride takes you through an eerie twilight zone episode with holograms, then the room goes dark and the floor basically drops out from under you. You fall thirteen stories and then come back up and fall again a couple times. Its a lot of fun.

Anyway, when I was boarding it there was this young guy, probably early twenties. He was in a wheelchair and had no arms or legs. He made it all the way to the boarding area and the Universal folks turned him away because he had no limbs to stop him from banging around the cage.

I felt sorry for the guy because, aside from the no arms and legs thing, I'm sure it took him a bit to wait and get wheeled up to the front of the ride.

You're thinking of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney, not Universal. Awesome ride.

So a woman didn't fall out to her death, because according to you, it's unpossible.

Never said that. I only said the amount of safety is pretty good. It's not like a carney worker who is half drunk or strung out on meth and skips putting every other bolt on your local traveling circus

The All-Powerful Atheismo:SpiderQueenDemon: 3. Our Team Leader had once spotted a 'scared' guest who had come alone, undone his belt and used his knee to prop the bar up when it locked. TL caught this from the guy's facial expression alone, refused the 'clear' and signed to the team from Control to third-check him. The extra "you okay there, buddy?" caused the guest to first panic, then burst into sobs. Turned out the poor guest was suicidal, deep in debt, and his plan had been to kill himself on a coaster so his family would get a settlement from the park.

your Team Leader ruined peoples' lives. By allowing him to live, he:

A. Prolonged this guy's sufferingB. Prolonged his family's suffering as they have to deal with himC. Deprived the other guests of an awesome front row view

And D) Likely prevented a lawsuit that could well have resulted in the whole damn park shutting down. (Yes, this becomes relevant, kids.)

If memory serves me right, SQD shares similar stomping grounds to myself, and there are only three parks that have been around in the past ten years that have had woodies--a well-known family-run park known for its holiday theming and for having some of the best woodies in the country, a long-running park that has two particularly famous woodies (and a failed experiment at a woodie with a loop that is likely to be permanently Standing But Not Operating), and a small park that started out as an indie operation (and one which was starting to develop a decent rep in the coaster community, in part because of two decent woodie coasters) and was promptly farked up by Six Flags.

That third park is, as a whole, SBNO (it might reopen under the original management in 2014) thanks to a wee bit of a mechanical oopsie that happened with a non-coaster ride originally known as the Hellevator and later (post-Six-Flags-borging) got renamed to some Superman-themed thingie. (It will always be known as the Hellevator to those of us who remember the park before Six Flags got hold of it.) Apparently there had not been the level of maintenance of rides under Six Flags management that there had been under the original ownership, and a lift cable snapped and pretty much field-amputeed a 12-year-old girl. (They tried reattaching the legs at the local Shriner hospital but at least one of them was unsuccessful.)

Parents proceed to sue the everloving crap out of Six Flags, and as a result Six Flags pretty much dropped the park like a hot potato along with other parks it felt were liabilities (including a park in New Orleans they had gotten around the same time which is likewise in a state of SBNO, probably permanently thanks to that old biatch Katrina) as they were pretty damn close to bankrupt at the time.

And that is pretty much how this sort of shiat can kill a park :P

(That said--now I'm very curious as to what park SQD worked at--if it was one of the three locals/regionals or something farther afield a la Cedar Point :D)

SpiderQueenDemon:GreatGlavinsGhost: SpiderQueenDemon: ... You don't want to know what Queen and King were. Really.

Now I do.

Queen was about-to-puke and King was about-to-pee-or-crap.

On days when the line got long, the latter was a legitimate concern. So we got a take-a-number like the deli has and if someone had gotten all the way to the train and had to pee, we'd give them and their buddy a number, send them to use the facilities and then let them back on through the exit, skipping the line.

Coaster-sign for 'Queen' was a finger drawn alongside the forehead to the ear, kind of miming a tiara, and 'King' was the same gesture with three fingers. Could easily be mistaken for wiping one's brow. It's a subtle language. We even had a special sign for 'complete asshole' which Control could respond to with the sign for 'Staple.'

Have heard of 'stapling', had rather a pervier idea of what "King" or "Queen" meant (people trying to do the naughty on the coaster, hehe), but thanks for the clarification--sounds like work was quite the adventure (and not quite the horror stories I've heard from the occasional ex-Disney Cast Member, hehe).

TOSViolation:jst3p: Well, there is a good chance that she was a young earth creationist pro-lifer. Let's be positive her.

At least we all know there is a 100% chance you're an idiot.

You see, here. Here is everything wrong with the internet. Sure, we can ignore the Grammar Nazis' constant cries for attention here and there. But this...this is just something. No one has ever confused "here" for "her." They know it, I know it, you know it. The odds of this being a typo are damn near 100%, yet you use this as evidence of someone's stupidity. This says way more about you than it does about the person who had the gall to not push down that last "e" on the keyboard quite enough.

Haunted Hotel at MGM at Universal Studios Florida- if you're unfamiliar, you're in a car and you're secured by a lap bar. The ride takes you through an eerie twilight zone episode with holograms, then the room goes dark and the floor basically drops out from under you. You fall thirteen stories and then come back up and fall again a couple times. Its a lot of fun.

Anyway, when I was boarding it there was this young guy, probably early twenties. He was in a wheelchair and had no arms or legs. He made it all the way to the boarding area and the Universal folks turned him away because he had no limbs to stop him from banging around the cage.

I felt sorry for the guy because, aside from the no arms and legs thing, I'm sure it took him a bit to wait and get wheeled up to the front of the ride.

#1) That's Disney Hollywood Studios where the ride is at. Not Universal.

#2) It may be a hydraulic bar that is backed up by a simple ratchet system to ensure the bar stays in place. Even with that being said, most manufacturer's have a minimum level to which restraints can be set in order for a train to be marked as 'all clear' for dispatch. I know when I worked at amusement parks (I was a rides supervisor for 2 years...an operator and lead for 2 before that), you couldn't just dispatch a train with '1-click' or above a certain mark (for hydraulic bars).

#3) You have to take into account body shape and size. The seats and restraints are designed to fit a good 95% of people. But for that 5% where the seat or restraints is not designed to fit or even accomodate that kind or style of body type...it's generally listed on the ride sign out front as a 'prohibiting condition' for riding the attraction. Most likely this woman was really...really fat. Or she had a body type that was in the 5% group to for which the ride wasn't designed for.

Oldiron_79:I wish they would do something like this(give me a skip line ticket for another ride) when I wait through like an hour long ride only to find out my shoulders are like 8" too high for the shoulder bar to go over. Its nice when they have a sample seat out around where the line starts where I can test before I wait in line.

We had a couple of awesome regulars who were wheelchair users and season-pass holders. One time, a guy waited through our murderbeast of a line and was just a hair too pudgy for the lap bar, and our blessed rolling regulars said "Dude, don't take it out on the ride people, they didn't build the thing. What's a ride you can ride, come with us and they'll let you skip the line." We always let them ride for as long as they bloody well pleased after that. It was a kind and generous gesture from two wonderful human beings and I have never forgotten it.

So yeah, the secret to endless line-skips is to befriend a 'chair-user. I have a dear 'chair-using cousin who hasn't paid admission to an amusement park since the Clinton administration, friends and relations just keep treating her to avail themselves of what she calls the Royal Gimpy Prerogative.

Haunted Hotel at MGM at Universal Studios Florida- if you're unfamiliar, you're in a car and you're secured by a lap bar. The ride takes you through an eerie twilight zone episode with holograms, then the room goes dark and the floor basically drops out from under you. You fall thirteen stories and then come back up and fall again a couple times. Its a lot of fun.

Anyway, when I was boarding it there was this young guy, probably early twenties. He was in a wheelchair and had no arms or legs. He made it all the way to the boarding area and the Universal folks turned him away because he had no limbs to stop him from banging around the cage.

I felt sorry for the guy because, aside from the no arms and legs thing, I'm sure it took him a bit to wait and get wheeled up to the front of the ride.

You're thinking of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney, not Universal. Awesome ride.

That's right. It's been over ten years since I went park hopping in Orlando.

Great Porn Dragon:Have heard of 'stapling', had rather a pervier idea of what "King" or "Queen" meant (people trying to do the naughty on the coaster, hehe), but thanks for the clarification--sounds like work was quite the adventure (and not quite the horror stories I've heard from the occasional ex-Disney Cast Member, hehe).

People trying to mate on the coaster was called a 'Jane Goodall,' and luckily we didn't see many, because our belt-and-bar system and the aggressive wooden-coaster thing made it kind of hard. But there was one steel coaster I shall not name upon which the ride-ops swore a lady got pregnant while B train was at Safety Twos for a long load time on A train. It may have just been a legend, but there were those who claimed to have met the kid and gotten free donuts from the happy couple whose infertility issues were magically solved.

And Disney Cast Members were like the Air Force to our Navy. There was a mild, kind of inter-service rivalry, but at the end of the day, any Disney kids we knew had fought the same battles, been through the same hardships and we all get along. Our costumed characters had an easier time, for sure, but we almost certainly cleaned up more puke.

Six Flags, conversely, we regarded as kind of like the Mayberry Police Department to our Navy, not even competition. There was some active contempt there, especially after a certain high-profile accident on a ride that we had one of with no problems whatsoever. There were some downright obscene jokes about Six Flags ride-ops, and some that were just so difficult to explain with coaster jargon and specific scorn of various rides with which ours competed that they really don't translate outside the ride-op community. It was frequently implied that our Corporate might have kept a goat for immoral purposes, but only Six Flags managed to deduct the poor creatures as an entertainment expense.

And carnie folk, who worked on rides that moved around the country and stuff, were like the Untouchables in India. We would snub them in the streets if we met them. Claim to have worked on 'a ride like this,' especially to the op of a 'circular' ride, and be prepared for the "Where?" to be as sharp and urgent as an inquiry into "You did WHAT with the third-graders' pet hamster?"

CWeinerWV:TOSViolation: jst3p: Well, there is a good chance that she was a young earth creationist pro-lifer. Let's be positive her.

At least we all know there is a 100% chance you're an idiot.

You see, here. Here is everything wrong with the internet. Sure, we can ignore the Grammar Nazis' constant cries for attention here and there. But this...this is just something. No one has ever confused "here" for "her." They know it, I know it, you know it. The odds of this being a typo are damn near 100%, yet you use this as evidence of someone's stupidity. This says way more about you than it does about the person who had the gall to not push down that last "e" on the keyboard quite enough.

Now you've just jumped onto the idiotcoaster with him. It wasn't about the typo. The fact that you think that's what indicated he is an idiot just proves you're an equivalent idiot.

The hilarious thing is that the typo is the only thing you found wrong with what he wrote.

Overweight people tend to be a notable casualty in rollercoaster rides. Below stupid people breaking the rules and above technical problems.

Shame she had to die, though. And with her family noticing, too.

Silly open question (because this thread is solidly in TL:DR territory): Aren't there weight restrictions on rides like this? Because I'd be shocked if she didn't overstep it by a few dozen Big Macs or so. Not to mention, I don't care how much fun a ride is, or how many times you have to ask, I'd NEVER go on a ride if the safety equipment didn't work right on me.

If I had to apply my Fark Lawyer GED on this one, I'm guessing the family won't get much if they push back against whatever settlement Six Flags gives, because it sounds like she's at fault if there's a weight limit, and they're at fault due to the whole seatbelt issue, so possible wash.

\either way, this does in fact suck royally for all involved\\and before you say I'm weight biased, before my diet, I barely fit into the roller coasters at Universal Studios Florida\\\one of the many reasons I went on said diet\getting there slowly but surely

SpiderQueenDemon:Oldiron_79: I wish they would do something like this(give me a skip line ticket for another ride) when I wait through like an hour long ride only to find out my shoulders are like 8" too high for the shoulder bar to go over. Its nice when they have a sample seat out around where the line starts where I can test before I wait in line.

We had a couple of awesome regulars who were wheelchair users and season-pass holders. One time, a guy waited through our murderbeast of a line and was just a hair too pudgy for the lap bar, and our blessed rolling regulars said "Dude, don't take it out on the ride people, they didn't build the thing. What's a ride you can ride, come with us and they'll let you skip the line." We always let them ride for as long as they bloody well pleased after that. It was a kind and generous gesture from two wonderful human beings and I have never forgotten it.

So yeah, the secret to endless line-skips is to befriend a 'chair-user. I have a dear 'chair-using cousin who hasn't paid admission to an amusement park since the Clinton administration, friends and relations just keep treating her to avail themselves of what she calls the Royal Gimpy Prerogative.

I'm aware of the wheelchair person as a line cut, I have a paraplegic cousin. Of course you don't always have them with you.

But yeah I'm too tall in the torso for most rides with a shoulder bars, I can't even get it to try and go over my shoulders, It sincerely sucks to wait like an hour in line in 100degree weather just to figure out you won't fit fark you wait an hour for another ride.

FriarReb98:Silly open question (because this thread is solidly in TL:DR territory): Aren't there weight restrictions on rides like this? Because I'd be shocked if she didn't overstep it by a few dozen Big Macs or so. Not to mention, I don't care how much fun a ride is, or how many times you have to ask, I'd NEVER go on a ride if the safety equipment didn't work right on me.

If I had to apply my Fark Lawyer GED on this one, I'm guessing the family won't get much if they push back against whatever settlement Six Flags gives, because it sounds like she's at fault if there's a weight limit, and they're at fault due to the whole seatbelt issue, so possible wash.

\either way, this does in fact suck royally for all involved\\and before you say I'm weight biased, before my diet, I barely fit into the roller coasters at Universal Studios Florida\\\one of the many reasons I went on said diet\getting there slowly but surely

I'm a retired ride-op (we do not quit or become 'former,' we 'retire,' and there is a ceremony involving a Solo cup, the beverage of one's choice and a seat on the ride one worked after-hours,) and I am acquainted with several professional safety engineers and OSHA-type people.

My guess is that the fault is about 33/33/34 here.

First, the manufacturer of the ride should have equipped the proximity sensor to read the lock status of the lap bar and potentially halt the Clear if a harness was in any way questionable. That's been standard on certain Intamin and Bollinger & Mabillard 'coasters since the late Eighties. Even Arrow Dynamics had that technology. So one-third blame to them. Even if the original track was not so equipped, it is a matter of adding quite literally $16 worth of extremely basic electronics (I am assuming wholesale prices and in-house installation,) to an existing seat, between three and twelve additional magnetic sensors at an approximate cost of $50-100 apiece and a single additional panel for Control with perhaps LED warning lights. Worst case scenario, five grand per train. For perspective, the park at which I worked cleared that figure on parking fees alone before lunch break. So that was neglectful, given the state of the industry. One-third blame.

Second, the rider almost certainly had an opportunity to try the seat before getting in line and evaluate its' ability to latch securely. One thing I'll say for Six Flags, they do tend to keep a seat at the head of the line for tests of this kind. She also could have refused to ride if the seat's looseness frightened her, asked the ride-ops if one row of seats is larger (many American 'coasters have one or two larger seats in a given train, not just for corpulent people but extremely muscular and tall gentlemen of the NFL linebacker variety, or, you know, SAID to a ride-op 'will this seat fit me?' if there was doubt.

Within the park at which I worked, we had special sensitivity and tact training for specially checking a larger guest, we kept some 'consolations' on hand for when a guest of larger size or smaller height could not ride (under Fearless Leader's command, for example, we gave them the privilege of giving the countdown over the loudspeaker and pressing the 'Go' button at Control, as well as a photograph with the on-duty team if they had a camera and wanted one,) and we generally worked very hard to make exceptionally short or round people's visits a memorable and kind one even if our equipment could not safely accommodate them.

We even knew to adjust the greeting just slightly for exceptional guests at Entrance: "Glad to have you with us! Is this your first time on this ride today? Really, no? Well, our seats were changed recently, and if you'd like to try one out for comfort, you're welcome to help yourself to a sneak preview in our test seat her! They're a little snug on me. [This was said regardless of ride-op's size, and the big 'coasters did not employ people who were what one'd call slight of build, given the demands of the work,] So you might want to check and make sure it's to your liking." Note the tone. It was like we were offering them a taste of some wine we feared might be corked, and if the ride couldn't accommodate them, we behaved like self-hating sommeliers.

There are fat people and short people who do become ride-ops. (They do not tend to stay fat long, but that's the job for you.) They know how the riders feel. The best part of our day is when the train comes back and people cheer for the coaster and for our ride-op team. It broke my heart when riders of exceptional height or size could not enjoy our coaster, and we kept seat measurement charts of every ride in the park and would give them a line-skip note with the proper stamp for any other ride they loved and knew they could ride if it meant they weren't sad anymore. We really tried, from Entrance to Height-Check to Train to Control, and for a guest to ignore the people working there when we might have helped is what has made this story so sad for me. My team would never have let this happen. Never.

So that's a third of the blame for the rider. It's sad, but we're there to help, and she could have asked.

And the final, slightly one-percent-worse bit of blame goes to Corporate. They not only didn't train the ride-ops to intervene with tact and grace, they didn't equip the coaster with restraint-check passive safety sensors or a Clear lockout in case of unlocked or questionable harness and they didn't insist on a policy that put safety first, even at the risk of a guest's feelings. The tact and poise my team employed was standard throughout the park, and we were regularly secret-shopped by exceptionals to make sure we would never put a guest in harm's way.

They could have saved this woman. Maybe at the expense of a ride missed out on, maybe at the expense of some dignity and/or a frivolous 'I'm offended because the ride didn't fit me' lawsuit, but they could have saved her. The siren song of the rollercoaster is not something everyone can resist, no matter what their size, and as guardians of the rolling wind, they had a moral duty to try their best.

And they farked it up.

Tonight ride-ops all over America shall raise a silent glass to the love the lost lady had for our art, and then drink deeply of the shame which has fallen upon our industry. My Texan brothers and sisters might even pour out a Gatorade for the fallen and for the ride-ops who personally failed the Belt and the Bar, the Hand and the Sign.

SpiderQueenDemon:FriarReb98: Silly open question (because this thread is solidly in TL:DR territory): Aren't there weight restrictions on rides like this? Because I'd be shocked if she didn't overstep it by a few dozen Big Macs or so. Not to mention, I don't care how much fun a ride is, or how many times you have to ask, I'd NEVER go on a ride if the safety equipment didn't work right on me.

If I had to apply my Fark Lawyer GED on this one, I'm guessing the family won't get much if they push back against whatever settlement Six Flags gives, because it sounds like she's at fault if there's a weight limit, and they're at fault due to the whole seatbelt issue, so possible wash.

\either way, this does in fact suck royally for all involved\\and before you say I'm weight biased, before my diet, I barely fit into the roller coasters at Universal Studios Florida\\\one of the many reasons I went on said diet\getting there slowly but surely

I'm a retired ride-op (we do not quit or become 'former,' we 'retire,' and there is a ceremony involving a Solo cup, the beverage of one's choice and a seat on the ride one worked after-hours,) and I am acquainted with several professional safety engineers and OSHA-type people.

My guess is that the fault is about 33/33/34 here.

First, the manufacturer of the ride should have equipped the proximity sensor to read the lock status of the lap bar and potentially halt the Clear if a harness was in any way questionable. That's been standard on certain Intamin and Bollinger & Mabillard 'coasters since the late Eighties. Even Arrow Dynamics had that technology. So one-third blame to them. Even if the original track was not so equipped, it is a matter of adding quite literally $16 worth of extremely basic electronics (I am assuming wholesale prices and in-house installation,) to an existing seat, between three and twelve additional magnetic sensors at an approximate cost of $50-100 apiece and a single additional panel for Control with perhaps LED warning li ...

You should write a book about this shiat. I'm totally enjoying your posts.

gpuica:A lot of wood coasters don't have a second restraint. Those that do usually just have a lap belt that won't do much if you've managed to break or slip out of the locking restraint.

That said, I don't remember Nitro (steel coaster) at Great Adventure having anything more than a primary restraint, but it comes in from the front rather than from the top (hip and thigh rather than just hip/belly), and they make sure it's VERY tight. The purpose is to hold your legs clamped down and let the rest of your body feel "free."

On this wooden coaster, I'm pretty sure the restraint is sandwiching your hips, and a very overweight person may easily slip out if their hips are actually a hanging belly, or if the belly is blocking the restraint from coming all the way down.

This lady was definitely larger than this girl that borrowed our car one time to make a drive to K-Mart, and returned the car with it's suspension totally broken on the driver's side. There's no way this girl should've been allowed on any ride in any amusement park.